There’s so much happening in the circus that is 2017 American Politics that you’d be forgiven for missing something important. A Volkswagen full of clowns has caught fire in the center ring and a bear with a propellor beanie is eating her trainer in another, so it’s understandable that you didn’t notice when someone…

There’s always buzz in the weeks leading up to the X Games about what insane, unprecedented maneuvers you might see. Max Parrot might try the quadruple underflip. Marcus Kleveland may go for the first quad cork. The 1620 is the new 1440. These promises, of things we’ve never seen before, are the reason we watch.…

The shortest distance from Cuba to the United States is about 90 miles across the Florida Strait. By the standards of human-powered sea travel, it’s extremely doable, and it has been done for decades by refugees aboard the most makeshift of watercraft, driven by desperation. In the peak years, tens of thousand of…

The Hero4 Session is GoPro’s smallest camera. It’s a little, unibody cube that’s waterproof on its own and is even more versatile in the ways it can be mounted thanks to its lightness, its shape, and its size. We liked it a lot when we tested it, but there was a problem: At $400 it was the same price as the Hero4…

You’ve seen the kick. We’ve all seen the kick. Left shin meets jaw/neck, and Ronda Rousey is out. It was a brutal, iconic moment, but it’s almost beside the point: Holly Holm was already beating Rousey, and beating her badly. She wasn’t just edging her out; it was total domination from start to finish.

300 miles north of Vancouver lies the Great Bear Rainforest. It’s a huge, rugged, chunk of land with ample diversity of scenery, and the best part is that it is very, very sparsely populated. Think Yellowstone minus the tourists. In a nutshell, you want to go to there.

Two years ago the Google god in the sky gave unto us a $35 dollar media-streaming dongle, and lo, it was good. Pretty good anyway, and it got better with software updates, but it still has lagging tendencies. Well, it’s 2015 baby, so what’s the new Chromecast got? Less lag! And... that’s pretty much it. But honestly,…

Back in July GoPro announced a way for you to get paid for the videos you shoot via a licensing portal, but now it’s upping the ante. With GoPro Awards, an ongoing contest pays you for the photos and videos you shoot. $500 for a photo, $1,000 for a raw video clip, and $5,000 for a video edit. Not bad.

If the theme of my last Connected States column was about friends on the road, this one is about strangers. Those people who you never would have met if you hadn’t ventured from the nest. On the road through Montana, Idaho, and Oregon, I was lucky enough to meet some rather wonderful unfamiliars, some of whom really…

As predicted, today Google unleashed not one but two Chromecast devices. They’re both impressive, and they’re both still just $35. I just spent a little time with both of them and here are my impressions.

The original Nexus 5 was has remained one of my favorite phones since its launch. It just fit in my hand so perfectly, and it was fast as hell. Still, it was crippled by truly terrible battery life, and when longer-lasting phones came along I couldn’t help but switch.

GoPro’s got itself quite a stable of little cameras these days. We already had (from high end to low end) the Hero4 Black, Hero4 Silver, Hero4 Session, Hero+LCD, and the straight up Hero. Now, squeezing in between those bottom two, comes the Hero+. It’s a $200 version of the Hero ($130), but it has Wi-Fi and has…

A couple months ago a friend of mine approached me with something that sounded insane. Did I want to kayak from Cuba to Florida? I hadn’t paddled in a year, it was just a month away, and I’d just broken a rib. It was almost certainly a very, very stupid idea. So I said yes.

TomTom’s first running watch was a great first step two years ago. Last year it got even better, with an integrated heart rate monitor. For this year’s watches, TomTom is adding full activity tracker capabilities and the ability to stream music to Bluetooth headphones, all for a pretty reasonable price.

There’s something magical about traveling alone. Yes, there are more risks involved, but it pays dividends in nimbleness. Eventually, though, you get tired of talking to yourself (or your GoPro), you have trouble following your audiobook, and you’ve been through all of your pre-downloaded music. Having an ally on your…

Sturgis is a small town in western South Dakota with a year-round population of less than 7,000 people. Yet every year more than a hundred thousand bikers descend on that tiny town for the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. This year being the 75th anniversary the numbers are even higher. But of course they haven’t just…

Welcome back to the Connected States, the project that involves me living in a van for a year, driving around and telling stories. After going live last week I was absolutely overwhelmed by the positive response. I received so many tips, well-wishes, and offers of help that I haven’t been able to respond to them all…